Have a video, music or photo idea? GoChongo wants you

GoChongo today is unveiling a new online entertainment service where “producers” can locate “performers” to help create videos, music, photographs and other digital content.

For example, a house music aficionado who was putting together a new CD could commission a project on goChongo to solicit 30-second samples from DJs. As an incentive, the producer offers a small cash reward for the winning submission.

In testing for the past month, there are currently about four open projects on the site. Those include a T-shirt design competition by the Dollyrots, which released a new album last month. The band, which is offering $50 for the top design, plans to sell the T-shirts while on tour. The submission deadline is May 15.

Most of the cash prizes on the site are under $50. But there are other ways that producers and performers will be compensated.

GoChongo plans to share advertising revenue with members, with one-third going to producers and one-third going to performers.

“The idea here is to align incentives, so that everyone puts their best foot forward. Our theory is that the quality of the content will go up,” said Shawn Plaster, the 36-year-old founder of goChongo.

Created last year last year with about $175,000 in startup capital, Plaster said that the 9-person Seattle startup will help large corporations find creative advertising ideas.

“For them, it is a unique brand building opportunity,” says Plaster. “They can commission a project for the entire goChongo community to submit content and vote upon the one they like the best. And that same user generated commercial will be run exclusively on goChongo.com and appear at the beginning of all content on the site.” Plaster said that type of advertising will resonate with the community, since they helped design or vote on the ads.

A long-time Accenture employee, Plaster admits that goChongo faces plenty of competition. One threat is ViTrue, a year-old Atlanta startup which operates the online video sharing site Sharkle.com. Backed by Comcast Interactive Capital, Turner Broadcasting, General Catalyst Partners and others, ViTrue has already set up an online video site for Pringles dubbed Jingles for Pringles in which voters cast ballots for their favorite user-submitted videos.

Plaster said goChongo is taking a different approach, focusing on the consumer experience.

“We are building a platform for consumers to entertain themselves and interact with one another,” said Plaster. “We created a Web site where we feel like consumers will have fun and have a good time regardless of the monetary incentive.”

Other players include Next Webstar, Votigo and Bix, the online contest site that was acquired by Yahoo last November. And, of course, the big gorilla is Google which could easily move in this direction through its YouTube acquisition.

Initially slated to debut in January, Plaster said they scrapped the initial architecture in favor of designing the entire site as a Web application. That set the company back three months, but Plaster thinks it will pay off by making the site faster and easier to upgrade.